Dubai: Part 1

People come to Dubai with eyes wide open. They are on vacation, they are buying second homes, they might even be here for business, and all the while, they are wowed. Everything is big, its clean, its beautiful, its safe, its all impressive from beginning to end.

But just as they enter city through the airport gates, get whisked by in the airport's especially allocated, clean taxis, just as they race towards the west end, close to the Marina, the golf courses, the western restaurants, the delectable cuisine, the money-making companies, the yacht clubs and the five-stars, just as they zip by the rest of the city, they leave behind the truth. The darker sobering truth about this place which once someone knows about, they are most sure not to return to their original opinion of this pictureque place.

This is the world that lives between the highways, the one that has constant traffic, the one that has men living in close quarters, sometimes 8 to a room, a world where food costs a pittance to make, a world far off from the glitz and glamour of Marina Walk- where 60 dirhams will buy you a feast for you and your friends, while it would barely have got you fries with your burger in the west end. This is the side of town where people are driven from their homes on a daily basis, because as they do not get paid enough, they have to share rooms and bathroom, unsafe according to the government, which runs them out of this situation to save them, but leaves them destitute without a place to stay, and a whole world to support back in their home countries.

These are the places where the poor live- they are paid a pittance, some as low as 700-1000 dirhams in a month, in a country where the monthly payment on a bottom-line Toyota Yaris is no more than 900 dirhams. These are the people building this nation, they slave 4am-4pm, and so does the next shift, they work through sun and heat, they have sand blown in their faces all day, constructing multi-billion dollar development, then at shift end, they pack into TATA buses by the scores, sit 3 to a seat and are hauled away to labor camps to sleep, sometimes seven to a room. Any curspry conversation with any of them will tell you this, but who is asking- no one. These are the poorly fed, the forgotten of this land who are yelled at like dogs, treated like chattel and deported if they so much as say a word.

People who come here are first filled with wonder, then they start questioning why their nations are not able to do this, then they justify that with the same reason that has been given the last ten yars- it must be the oil, everyone is using it, and these people are making money from it.

Sadly, thats not true. This country, like others in the region keeps growing because it is still allowed to treat some people like cattle. It has a hidden underclass of immigrants who have nothing, will have nothing, and thus will keep working till their backs break. Consider this, in a three year period, a whole building can be raised from the ground up- during this time, the cheapest expense to the builder will be the labor cost, not the rented machines, not the concrete or the fixtures, the labor, human capital willing to do anything for a morsel of money, which allows them and their family back home to claim that they live, albeit one day at a time.

That is why this country keeps progressing, its not the oil- its the fact that they can still treat people like shit. This stopped long ago in other places, and hence those place are prone to progress and recession, prone to middle-income homes etc. This does not happen in the Middle East, there is no down, its always been up and up, from the first moment of independence till now, this place has never seen a recession.

Take a detour into Deira, Bur Dubai or Satwa and you will see the real Dubai. This is where the city breathes and sleeps. Stay on the other side and you'll bre amongst the leeches, the people that feed off the others, living a pricey, comfy life at the expense of others.